On October 24, Riyadh seats the leaders of the Gulf and of the European Union at one table, and the Kingdom has spent the past three weeks assembling that table letter by letter. King Salman has sent written invitations to the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Meshal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah; the King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa; the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani; and this week the President of the UAE, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, each delivered by a Saudi ambassador in person. For residents of the Kingdom, the item with the widest reach on the emerging agenda is mobility: the opening of a process to waive Schengen visa requirements for Saudi citizens.
The first EU-GCC summit met in Brussels in October 2024. Holding the second in Riyadh changes what the meeting is for. The host writes the draft communiqué, sets the bilateral schedule around the main session, and decides which deliverables are announced on its soil. The invitation wave is part of the same craft: a summit convened by the Kingdom and delivered through its embassies arrives in European capitals as a Saudi production rather than a Brussels calendar entry.
GCC Secretary-General Jasem Albudaiwi set expectations for the central deliverable in an interview recorded this week in Bahrain, on the sidelines of the Made in GCC forum. He expects the summit to start the process of waiving the Schengen visa requirement for citizens of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait. “We are very close to reaching the beginning of the process to waive the Schengen visa,” he said. The UAE is currently the only Gulf state whose citizens enter the Schengen area visa-free for short stays; the other five members apply embassy by embassy, trip by trip.
The phrasing carries its own information: the beginning of a process. Schengen exemption runs through European legislative machinery, a Commission proposal followed by approval in the Parliament and among member states, and a summit can open that path without being able to shorten it. The practical change for Saudi travelers would arrive later, measured in months at the earliest. What October 24 can produce is the political fact of a launched process, with a text that holds both sides to it.
The file also has a known absence. A free trade agreement, under negotiation with the EU in various forms for decades, is not expected to close at this summit. Albudaiwi was specific about the obstacle: the European side wants provisions, including human rights clauses, that the Gulf side believes belong outside a trade text. The sequencing is legible. A visa waiver costs European governments little and is immediately visible to Gulf publics; a trade agreement is the reverse, expensive to conclude and slow to show. The bloc closed its trade agreement with the United Kingdom earlier this year, which gives the European track a nearby benchmark and the Gulf side a stronger hand than it held in 2024.
Three lines in the preparatory file are worth following. The first is the rest of the invitation wave, with letters so far confirmed in Kuwait City, Manama, Lusail and Abu Dhabi. The second is the European attendance list, which will show how many heads of state and government make the trip alongside the institutions’ leadership. The third is the visa language in the final communiqué: if it names a mechanism and a date, October 24 becomes the reference point from which the next phase of EU-GCC business is measured.